With the holidays upon us, the entire town of Merrickville will be celebrating Christmas in Merrickville this Saturday, December 6th. The town will be chock-full of cheer with wagon rides, a petting zoo, carolers, and even a morning visit from the St. Nick himself!

As part of our Christmas in Merrickville celebrations, the Merrickville Book Emporium will be hosting acclaimed local writer Carol Williams, author of the popular Emma Field series of novels.

Read and re-read by young people and adults alike, the Emma Field series is about a young girl who grows up amongst the Quakers of her pioneer community of Bloomfield, Canada. Her further adventures take her amongst the Quakers of Nine Partners, New York, and later the runaway slaves and Haudenosaunee Iroquois of the Great Lakes.

Readers of the Emma Field series often praise author Carol Williams for the details she includes in her descriptions. But the descriptions are easy for her to come by. The farm where Emma started life has been in the Williams family for 200 years. The lambs which Emma helped birth could be lambs born on Williams’s farm south of Merrickville. The challenges Emma faced in school dove-tail with those faced by Williams as she teaches in the local high schools.

The Quaker presence which surrounded Emma is a presence which has deeply enriched Williams’s life and every single description of the natural world around Emma have come from Williams opening her senses to the sights, sounds and smells of life around her.

Come out and find the story behind the stories at 1:00 as Carol Williams shares photographs, family tales and cookies baked from a 19th Century Quaker cookbook. Boxed sets, created by Merrickville’s Larry Thompson of Greyweathers Press will be available for sale.

Williams’ writing has been described as the combination of earth, edge and steadiness. If you like the writing of Lucy Maud Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables), Gabrielle Roy (Children of My Heart) and Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist), you will enjoy these books.